India's top chefs have warned Scottish MPs to keep their hands off the rights to chicken tikka masala.

A plate of Chicken Tikka MasalaPhoto: GETTY

By Dean Nelson and Jalees Andrabi in New Delhi

6:40PM BST 04 Aug 2009

The MPs, led by Mohammed Sarwar, claim the dish was invented in Glasgow in the early 1970s and now want official European Union recognition through a "Protected Designation of Origin". It would put Glasgow's chicken tikka masala on a par with Parma's Parmesan cheese or French 'Champagne'.

The move is based on the claim by Ahmed Aslam Ali to have invented the dish at his Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow. "We used to make chicken tikka and one day a customer said 'I'd take some sauce with that, this is a bit dry' so we cooked chicken tikka with the sauce which contains yoghurt, cream, spices," he said.

But his claim has been dismissed as "preposterous" by Delhi's leading food historians, although its exact origin remains unclear.

Zaeemuddin Ahmad, a chef at Delhi's Karim Hotel, which was established by the last chef of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, said the recipe had been passed down through the generations in his family.

"Chicken tikka masala is an authentic Mughlai recipe prepared by our forefathers who were royal chefs in the Mughal period. Mughals were avid trekkers and used to spend months altogether in jungles and far off places. They liked roasted form of chickens with spices," he said.

Rahul Verma, Delhi's most authoritative expert on street food, said he first tasted the dish in 1971 and that its origins were in Punjab. "Its basically a Punjabi dish not more than 40-50 years old and must be an accidental discovery which has had periodical improvisations," he said.

Hemanshu Kumar, the founder of Eating Out in Delhi, a food group which celebrates Delhi's culinary heritage, ridiculed Glasgow's claim. "Patenting the name chicken tikka masala is out of the question. It has been prepared in India for generations. You can't patent the name, it's preposterous," he said.